Within hours it was on Roth’s desk. He had the CIA field office in Istanbul pick up the titanium case and it was immediately sent to a lab in Germany for analysis.

He’d briefed Laurel on everything to do with the envelope while failing to give her anything new on Spector.

She pulled his file to see if it had been updated. It was as sparse as the day she’d first read it. The suppressed civilian record. The sanitized army record. His group file with the Delta Force recruitment code and training record. Roth hadn’t been kidding when he said Spector was good. He had the best training scores she’d ever seen. But that was where the file ended. It was as if Spector disappeared after training.

Whatever he’d done for the group, and whatever had led to his leaving, had been wiped.

From his birth certificate she knew he was thirty-eight. His birth name had been erased but he was born in Montana, which was where he’d been since Roth froze his status two years ago. He had no living family, no kids, never married.

The thing that stuck out about it all was Roth’s treatment of him. The old man had stuck his neck out. That was weird. He wasn’t one for sentimentalism. Spector should have been terminated when his status was frozen. The rules were black and white. And ruthless.

No one simply got to check out.

She could see from the file Roth had taken pains not to make a final ruling on Spector’s status. It was simply frozen. In limbo.

“So,” Laurel said, “when are you going to tell me why you’ve got such a hard on for this guy?”

“Hard on?”

“Yeah,” she said, holding her fist in front of her groin. “Hard on.”

Roth made to say something, then stopped himself.

She raised an eyebrow. He really had no explanation.

“His name pops up and we fly halfway across the country in a snow storm?”

“He’s a good soldier, Laurel.”

“They’re all good soldiers.”

“He’s different.”

“No one’s different.”

Roth looked at her. “You don’t really think that.”

She shook her head. She wasn’t that cynical. Not yet.

But the assets were all as near flawless as soldiers could be. Laurel couldn’t imagine what made Spector different enough to warrant special treatment.

He had a good training record, but so what? There had to be more to it.

“You’ll meet him tomorrow,” Roth said.

“And then I’ll see for myself?”

“I don’t know that you will.”

“It’s all instinct, right?”

Roth shrugged.

“Let me ask you this,” she said. “If he’s so good, why did you cut him loose?”

She couldn’t help being curious. She’d waited two years for him and was finally about to meet him.

“I mean, on paper he’s perfect,” she said.